Wednesday, January 9, 2008

School Time…Please help me out….

As you guys know, English is my second language. Some terms just keep showing up during the time I follow MLB recent years. If someone has enough patience, would you guys please explain some of them for me. I know most of them related to my poor English. Thanks. I am very appreciated.

Q1：What does “my 2 cents” mean?

Q2：What does” I will land on my feet”mean?

Q3：Yankees went over slot recent years for draft pick and spent more money on signing them. What does “went over slot “ mean? What does “spent more money on signing” mean?

Q4：Clemens said ”I was eating Vioxx like it was skittles”. What “Vioxx and Skittles” are? What does this sentence mean?

Q5：I Know these are abbreviations. What do them mean? WTF? BTW? LOW? FWIW?

Q6：How revenue sharing works? What kind of percentage they get from big market team? What kind of percentage they give to small market team? How do they contribute during this whole revenue sharing?

Edit 2008/1/9

Q7：If Yankees trade for Santana and Twins grant a 72-hours window for Yankees to negotiate an extension with Santana, but Yankees and Santana can't get an extension done in 72 hours. Does it mean this trade dead and incomplete?

4 comments:

Hi again Jessica! I am glad to see you writing in your blog again! I lost your link for a while because I lost all my bookmarks but I found you again!

As far as your questions go:

Q1: "my two cents" just means that you're putting in your opinion. When you say "that's just my two cents," it means "that's just my opinion."

Q2: "I will land on my feet" means "I'll be ok" or "I will survive." It's kind of like, if I fall down, I will land on my feet, so I will be ok.

Q3: "going over slot" is kind of confusing. Slotting has something to do with the draft and a recommended system of cost control, sort of, for the draft. I don't totally understand it. sorry I can't really help with that one. Maybe someone else can help with that?

Q4: vioxx is an anti-inflammatory pain-killer Skittles is a fruit flavored candy. People sometimes say they eat pain killers like some kind of candy to imply they were taking a lot of it.

Q5: WTF = What The Fuck?BTW = By The WayFWIW = For What It's Worth

Q6: Revenue sharing will always confuse me. I'm not totally sure how it works, but I think it comes from the luxury tax? Anyone else know if I'm right on this?

Good to see you back, Jessica, even though it looks like you've been back a while!

Revenue sharing does involve various forms of redistributing actual payments from things like the luxury tax, but it also involves pooling all the money from things like the national television contract and apparel and online stuff. That means that even though the Yankees sell more T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, etc. and they are the team that ends up on national television all the time and they have the most visited Web site, they share equally in all those profits with the Pirates and the Royals of the world.

The MLB economic system combines the worst of socialism and the worst of capitalism in one big twisted monster that saps the fans and feeds the super-wealthy.

Sorry to ramble, Jessica. But you know my feelings on a system that taxes the Bronx – the poorest borough in New York City and one of the poorest urban areas in the country – for the benefit of team owners who are some of the richest men in the world.

The bottom-line on all revenue sharing in MLB is: it steals from the poor to give to the rich.